And before we begin with April 2006 - here is a link about Obama's preacher (yes, that mess), that I have to agree with here.
April 4
I’ve had about 2 ½ hours of sleep. Was mostly due to pain, but I also was worrying about the way I’d presented the Trinity – not problematically enough – and trying to remember the arguments of people like Origen, Marcios, Plotinus, Jerome, and Basil. I want to convey to the students that this is a difficult business. Jesus certainly didn’t preach it, his early followers didn’t believe it, and it didn’t spring whole and consistent out of nothing.
They, like me, have grown up so mired in it and the other Western Christian doctrines that they have no concept it could be any other way. That people, especially those close to the events, could disagree radically with one another over the meaning of what they’d experienced. I think today I want to present it differently. Talk about how we generally have the sense that if we could trace something back to its origins, we’d all be able to see it in a “pure” state. But with Christianity you do that search in vain. It was as diverse and as full of different interpretations from the beginning as it is today. Maybe even more so.
I want to encourage those who claim it as their religion to do some reading of and about the early Christians, to see that current doctrine had to be hammered out, and that not everyone bought the Nicene Creed, or agreed with the Apostolic Church. And they still don’t. Part of that, I suppose, is my personal agenda. I’d like them to know the same things I know.
But my other reasoning is 1) I hate ignorance. And mainstream American Christianity is ignorant and self-serving. 2) Ignorance breeds intolerance. I personally believe that Jesus’ message was not about hating others based on their belief of something different. I hate to see people claiming to have direct experience of God’s love preaching hate, or even being amazed that other Christians don’t share their exact interpretation.
The fact that they won’t find the central doctrines in the Bible anywhere hammers home the realization that it is ALL interpretation. Because they took it in with mother’s milk, the doctrine of their particular church seems self-evident. They don’t know, have never been taught, how it was really arrived at.
April 7
In other news, a new (old) Gospel has been found – the Gospel of Judas. In it, Judas is Jesus’ best friend, the only one he can trust with the important mission of getting him killed. He knows the others would fail, or falter at the last minute. I actually find that quite believable, but it does cast a new light on a lot of Jesus’ behavior. Seems to me it could be interpreted in one of two main ways.
The secular view would be that Jesus was a clever strategist, and realized that to make his movement stronger, to give him longer-lasting fame, he really needed to martyr himself. Maybe he was even crazy in the way suicide bombers are crazy and really believed God wanted him to die; that he’d be rewarded for it.
The other view would be that Jesus recognized his own divinity, was conscious that he was here to pay a price for all of humanity, and recognized when it was time for him to shed his body. In fact, the text of this new gospel has him telling Judas that his help is needed in freeing his spirit from the body.
What is really fascinating to me is how seriously everyone is taking it, when they utterly discount the other non-canonical gospels. People are funny. It does give me an opportunity to address the danger of bibliolatry. If you believe the Bible is divinely protected from error, rather than as a human endeavor, open to all human error, it only takes one demonstration that there was ever an error, or a mistranslation, and your whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
April 17
Wow, just read the Tarot reading I did on July 31, 1995. It was pretty much right on. I can really see that in retrospect. Maybe I should do another? Not today, there’s too much to do. But soon. Just to see what it says. Also was still looking for a savior, someone to bail me out financially. I wonder if I’m finally over that? I have come to terms with the idea that I’m always going to have to work. I don’t want to be the main provider in our family, but that’s the way it turned out, at least for now. Now that I did land a job, the thought doesn’t provoke as much anxiety as it once did. I was praying a lot then, and feeling very close to God. One common prayer – request for help to do better, to act in love, not as a slave to fear and rules, but as a transformed Child of God. Need to remember that.
Main lesson? I had a lot of anxiety and fear of being less than competent, but I prayed a lot and handed it all over to God, and things went pretty smoothly. I’ve known for several months that I need to spend part of each day in prayer. Knowing that, seeing how well it worked 11 years ago, and how things didn’t go as well when I stopped should serve as a pretty good sign of what I need to do, don’t you think?
On 8-22-95 I nailed my problem. The reason I had such a terrible time through graduate school and why I lost myself was because I caved in and lost the battle against cynicism. This is what I wrote then:
“In my fear, I have been reverting to my old defensive, cynical personality. I don’t like it. It’s not who I want to be anymore. I want to be gentle, thoughtful, silent unless I have something meaningful to say, kind, peaceful and filled with a subtle joy. That’s why I think putting myself in right relationship to God will straighten out much of my self-doubt and self-dislike.”
So wise, and yet my faith wasn’t strong enough. I caved in to peer pressure; other grad students were hard and cynical, not least Jim, and the work piled up, and I made a choice to go the way of the world. Quit going to church, quit praying, quit putting myself thru rigorous self-examination. And yes, I did finally manage to succeed and receive my degree, but at the cost of so much misery and despair, and the loss of my true self.
I’m still trying to find her, and it may be that only the God of my childhood can give her back to me. I’m hopeful, from what I’ve seen of [city I got a job in], that it will be a place that fosters the qualities I still most want to have and to display.
Something I think I need to do is write out a statement of faith, see where I stand. There is still something left, even when one strips off all the crap that I think the human church layered on. I need to find that kernel and build on it.
. . .
I want to begin today by reminding students that Christianity isn’t about good deeds, or being a good enough person. Its about receiving the gift of grace. About putting oneself in right relationship with God, and experiencing His love, and thus a release from guilt, darkness, and despair. From that experience, God’s love ought to flow from you and out to others. Then I can segue into Islam by saying that there is a sense that God decided to be more specific about how to love others, and he revealed this through another book – the Quran.
April 18
My idea yesterday to write out a statement of faith for myself was a good one. An ex-student of mine asked me to a while ago, and I put it off because I’m in a stage where my beliefs have been challenged and are in flux once again. I can’t just toss off a quick answer. It’s a lot easier to say what I don’t believe. But of course, now I’m out of time. Maybe I’ll have a chance later, but more likely tomorrow.
7:30 and I should be on the road but am not. When I get home I have to read at least 100 pages for class this afternoon, and I’ve got to get going on some of this other stuff. So maybe figuring out and writing down what I believe isn’t the highest priority. But it does feel somewhat urgent. Maybe, because I saw so clearly yesterday and remember what a difference faith makes in my life, how much better and happier I feel when I turn myself in God’s direction, and how much more I have to give others. I need that in my life. So I may need to make time for it. But right now I have to go.
First, as is probably clear by now, I do not believe in an exclusive God. That interpretation of Christianity (that it is the only valid faith system) has bothered me since childhood. With the doctrines of Original Sin and predestination, the message of exclusivity paints God as a mean-spirited trickster. Why would God have gone to all the trouble of making the universe, and then making humans and loving them like children, only to trick them into disobedience so he could punish them and condemn more than half of them to eternal torment? And then why would He introduce the only true way to a select group of people and prevent the rest from reaching Him? For me, that puts in conflict the notions that God is good and that he is all-powerful; He can’t be both and then behave like that.
What I can buy is the more Jewish and Muslim interpretation, that God created us in His image – by which I mean, made us to have sentience, to be conscious of ourselves, and to have free will – but we turned out to be weak. It may in fact be our very weakness that makes us so dear to Him. Like with puppies and kittens and children – much of their attraction is that they are learning, that they make mistakes, and are sometimes bad just to see what will happen; they are vulnerable and need protection and guidance. But are they evil? Even when they do bad things? I don’t think so. I just can’t buy it. Some do become evil, and I’m not sure exactly why. I suppose it could be that they are tempted by a powerful evil being. But I don’t think I really believe that. For one thing, it would mean God isn’t, cannot be, all-powerful. I suppose there might be room for angels who succumbed to their own weakness and became evil, a la Satan, but then there cannot be any doubt as to the final outcome. It isn’t really a contest. And anyway, I don’t believe it is necessary for humans to be tempted by a being. We find plenty of evil to do all by ourselves. I think Satan works best as a metaphor for our capability of doing terrible things, and our weakness.
But then one has to ask what the purpose of evil is? Why must there be pain and suffering and greed and hatred? Which is also like asking what life is for. For the first question, I think Orson Scott Card explained it very well in the Worthington Saga/Chronicles. In that book, Card shows how if God made a world where those things (pain, hate, greed, etc.) were impossible, if there were no possibility to choose them, then humans would all be robots. Without fear, there could be no heroism, no courage, and no triumph. Without pain, where would we learn humility, compassion, kindness? If greed were no temptation, then self-control, self-discipline and sacrifice could not exist. Without hatred, could we know what love is? So evil has to be a possibility. In fact, it has to be more than possibility, it has to be manifest. Some people must devote themselves to it, and all people must have some experience of it.
From that perspective, the snake in the garden was essential. Not an intruder, but part of God’s plan. But why? Why does it matter if we are courageous, humble, compassionate, kind and self-disciplined? Who cares if we can love? God must care for some reason. I can really only think of three, maybe four answers.
One, God is locked into a battle with an evil being, and needs good people trained up in these things to fight on his side. As I’ve said, I don’t really buy this. One could, but then even the definition of “good” is up for grabs. If there are two equal powers vying for control of the universe, wouldn’t “good” simply be defined by whoever wins? By choosing a side, all one is doing is saying how they would like life to be for future people. Which, come to think about it, isn’t a bad motivation. One fights for the “good” (however one defines it) because one wants life to be full of more goodness for future generations. But if it is a real battle between equal forces, then how could one side be the opposite of the other? I.e., to use a common example, if creativity is good, then evil could only destroy. Can one really believe in an entity who only wants to annihilate all existence, even itself? I know some people do, and they basically subscribe to the “sour grapes” theory. That Satan is so angry that he can’t be God, and be loved by all of creation – that he is essentially in so much pain from his separation from God that he’d rather not exist. But that means that he was created good, and there must be goodness in him. His bad behavior isn’t really evil then, but a cry for help. So he isn’t really the equal or the opposite of God. I guess I need to learn more about Zoroastrianism, since that is the origin of all this “darkness vs. light” battle stuff. For now, let’s set it aside as not credible.
Unless, maybe, what it refers to is more like matter vs. anti-matter. They are really opposites – negatives of one another, and when they come into contact they destroy one another. But they also create; that is, after all, the scientific explanation for how we got a universe. However, neither could be said to be evil. Our universe is made up of what we call matter, but there could easily be another universe made of anti-matter, that is the negative of our own. So they aren’t opposite in essence. One is just ours, and the other, “theirs.” Plus, doesn’t that imply the existence of something even greater that encompasses both? The matrix in which both matter and anti-matter universes are born and take shape? This is our second possibility. Applied to theology, it might suggest (as the Cathars believed) that there is a greater God than Yahweh/Allah, the creator god. It’s hard to fathom what that greater God’s purpose might be, but it would necessitate Its having created both God and God’s equal, opposing force. In which case, you would be serving that greater God regardless of whether you served God or Satan. Okay, but let’s leave this for now and say that an eternal battle between good and evil isn’t God’s motivation for creating us, and giving us free will. Why else might he have made us?
Third explanation: Perhaps He is training us for some other purpose? If life isn’t about recruiting people for one side versus another, then the only thing I can think of to explain the necessity of evil is for training. If not training to be warriors, then what? Maybe other realms or universes that God would like to create, or see created, but needs help with? Undermines his all-powerfulness, but I can sort of buy this. In other words, are we being trained to be creators ourselves? I’ll have more to say about this later, but clearly our creativity is a central part of what makes us human. Or, flipped the other way, our creativity is evidence that we were created in God’s image. So this is a possibility – we were created in order to beget more creations.
Maybe, but it still brings us back to why. Why create anything? For the sheer pleasure of creation? Perhaps. Of course, if there is no ultimate purpose, then this could be read as that God is kind of sadistic; it pleases Him to see us overcome pain and suffering and fear, to learn to be compassionate and kind, etc., and it doesn’t really matter to him what we go through to get there. I don’t much like that idea. I’d prefer to believe that there is more of a purpose to it. And I arrive at essentially two variants of the same thing at this point. Why is it important to God that we have self-consciousness and free will?
One answer is so that we can be more like him. But oops, that means that he also has to be subject to the temptations we are. Can’t be wholly good. Can be essentially good, but with some weaknesses. In fact, mustn’t this be true? We are said to be created in His image. Is it possible to create something with free will if one doesn’t have it oneself? I don’t know. If so, then I don’t see how God can be all-knowing, because how could he possibly predict what others – true Others – with qualities of which he has no experience – will do? So then life is just an experiment to see what such creatures will do.
Why would God want creatures that are more like him? Assuming now that God is self-conscious and has free will? My two answers are; 1) to have friends, and 2) to better understand himself. So ultimately I guess I’ve arrived at an understanding of a God that differs from the Semitic one somewhat, but isn’t wholly incompatible, either, with many of Yahweh/Allah’s actions and words. A God who is very powerful, enough to create this and maybe countless other universes. A God who is essentially good – I.e. moral, just, ethical. But also a God of free will who is subject to temptation. Maybe occasionally gives in to it? Maybe is also subject to growth and maturation? A God that was alone, outside time, without peer or senior or servant or lover or friend. Maybe God spent (spends, is spending, will spend) an eternity alone, enjoying himself. But at some point he becomes tired or dissatisfied with being One, and alone. So he starts creating things. It doesn’t really matter how many, or in what order, or how long it took, or the mechanism. At some point he creates our little planet and us humans, who are like him in some ways. Or I’d be more inclined to accept the Hindu version, that God said to Itself “Let us be many,” and broke himself up into billions of little souls. Now, in the Hindu version, this comes out of the sheer exhilaration of creation, but maybe also a desire to understand Itself better. This makes it a lot less sadistic, because God is putting Himself through all of these trials in order to learn and grow. Either way, what God really wants is two-fold; to experience companionship and be in relationship with others, and maybe to know himself better.
This is a God I can live with, in whom I can believe. Depending on how you look at it, either an imperfect God who is bettering himself, or a perfect god that is getting to know himself better. Perfect, because all there is, is Him. There being nothing outside of God, how could it be imperfect? The purpose of human life, then, generally and specifically, becomes providing these things. Be in relationship with God. Do your best to understand your own and God’s nature. Obviously, it is easier to study yourself. All of the world’s religions teach this, that the way to God, whatever called or however conceived, is through the self.
Going back to my comments about exclusivity and the nature of God, my instinct and my logic tells me that all of the world’s religions are right, and all of them are wrong. I think that each of them, followed diligently, lead one closer to God and to understanding Truth, Life, and Everything. [It’s just occurred to me that Binford’s concept of middle-range theory would be a helpful way of looking at it.] God exists (or doesn’t), but religions are man-made, and I think they all have ended up incorporating things that actually detract from our ability to be in relationship with God, and cloud our understanding. Still, they are the best things we’ve got so far.
So far, this is all logic and rationality. And of course, logic and rationality do not require that there be a God or a purpose at all. Like many others, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the surety that the search for meaning is hopeless. That in fact there is no point. Contrary to what the creationists say, or the proponents of intelligent design, there are very good theories (with plenty of facts to support them) for how the universe came into being, how the galaxies and planets formed, how life began, and how it evolved into producing sentient humans. Just because we cannot recreate it yet doesn’t mean one of the theories isn’t correct. Of course, these theories, especially their fine points, are still up for debate, but our explanations get better and tighter and more powerful every year.
I don’t believe one has to believe in a creator god. If there is one, I believe he hid his traces utterly. We will never find “proof” of God. And if he exists, I guess I believe that must have been part of his plan. It was important to him for some reason not to sign his work. I believe that looking for God in a “missing link[1]” scenario is a great way to set yourself up for a loss of faith.
April 20
I had a hard time last evening and night. I’d forgotten to take my 3rd pill of the day, at 12:00, or to pack one to take at 3:30, so went from 10am to 4:30 pm without. The pain was severe, and I couldn’t really beat it back all night. Had 2 crying jags – one right after Jim left and again trying to fall asleep. It gets so old, and even when one doesn’t believe in a vengeful God, it is hard not to feel one is being punished.
Actually, maybe that explains why people keep making religion be about rules. Even if it makes no logical sense, when bad things happen people want there to be a reason. If you don’t believe in witchcraft and sorcery, then you can’t blame it on others. If it isn’t someone else’s fault, some person’s, then whose fault is it? Maybe a devil – an evil being, but then you are kind of helpless. The only answer that gives one any sense of control is that it must be one’s own fault. One must be being punished. That way, all you have to do is figure out which rule you’ve broken, apologize and be contrite and stop doing it, and then you can stop the punishment and thus the pain.
Jim just read me a letter to the editor in which the writer describes a battle between the Church of Christ and the rest of the Christian churches over whether or not it is okay to worship with instruments, or whether it must be through only the human voice. I find the debate ridiculous. What was Jesus’ message but that people had gotten too hung up on rules, and forgotten about love? And here people are, all hung up about whether or not you can get into heaven if your song of praise is accompanied by a piano or guitar! Crazy! What can explain it? The only thing that makes any sense to me is that it gives people a sense of control over uncontrollable things. So we cave into the temptation to interpret pain and suffering as punishment even when that makes God into a petty tyrant, zapping people for every tiny infringement. Maybe I can work that into my lecture today about the law in Islam.
April 22
How can I express how tired I am of feeling the way I do? I want so much to get up on a beautiful Saturday like today and be full of energy. Clean the house, get some exercise, walk down to the farmer’s market, go shopping, have friends over, prepare an elaborate meal. Instead I’m chained to the chair, the couch, the bed. I can choose to do one of those things but only with the knowledge that I’ll pay a steep price. I hate it! I’m done with it! I’m sick of being so weepy and whiny. Of being a drag to be around. Of my candle barely flickering. Its been almost 11 months of torment. Isn’t that enough? I get so angry and frustrated and determined that I’m going to beat it, going to just throw it off and refuse to feel this way anymore. And next thing you know, I’m doubled over in pain – except that isn’t really true, because it hurts too much to double over. I’m in desperate need of a miracle. Where are all the saints and angels when you need them? Mom says I have to find a way to turn it over to God, and I’m sure she’s right. But how? One can mentally turn over physical pain all day, but the pain will still be there. The Buddha would say what I have to let go of is the notion and the desire to be any other way. It is my belief that I shouldn’t feel this way, that I’m entitled to be disease-free, that is the cause of my suffering – not the physical pain itself. But I don’t know how to let go of the disease-free idea of myself for more than a few seconds at a time. I know that I need to be grateful – must find a way to accept and give thanks for the gifts I’ve received as a result of this pain. I sometimes can manage that for a minute or two, but I can’t sustain it. I go right back to being furious and bitter and worn-out.
I think I really need to pray. Set aside time every day for prayer/meditation. It can’t hurt, right? At the very least it could help me calm down inside myself. And that brings me back to my statement of belief. I think I can indulge myself this morning.
I was talking about the limits of logic and rationality. Had established that they don’t require one to believe in God. In other words, I don’t think that anything exists or that has happened that can not be explained, or that is at least amenable to explanation, through logical argument, without recourse to “God.” I believe that is true of all the “miracles” – there is very likely a mechanism that could potentially be used to explain them. Just because we haven’t found the explanation yet doesn’t mean it does not exist. To think that our knowledge of physics will always remain at the level it is today seems very silly to me. For example, we cannot explain exactly what electricity is yet. But does anyone doubt that there is a rational explanation for it? No. We just don’t know it yet. So, if there is no logical reason to believe in God, then why do so?
Some argue that we need God in order to have morals. But that cannot be true. Human beings everywhere have the same basic laws against killing, lying, stealing, and being sexually promiscuous. These are things that, as Huston Smith points out, have such power to destroy communities that every community constructs laws and norms and sanctions to allow people to live together. Humans do not need God to hand down the 10 commandments in order to figure out that some actions cannot be tolerated. As any anthropology undergraduate could tell you, people will create moral orders, and justifications for them, regardless of whether or not God exists. So, logic and reason only get you so far. And as far as I can tell, they do not require one to believe in God.
But this kind of knowing is very limited. It can only ever explain what and how and when. It can never approach why. Someone could argue that there is no why. That why does not matter and that our search for it is the accidental result of having big brains. But I am in good company when I say that no; this search for meaning is an essential part of ourselves, of being human. So, while I acknowledge that in fact the anti-meaning biologists might actually be right – there is, after all, no way to prove they are not – that is a dead end. It sheds no light on how to live one’s life, and isn’t interesting to think about. So consider it a valid possibility and move on. If our flow chart takes us a different direction, then the fact that we humans are makers of meaning has to mean something in itself.
As does the reality that we have ways of knowing other than logic and reason. Theoria, vs. theory. Gnosis. Direct knowledge, or the faith experience. All of the world’s religions recount a similar experience, one that cannot be logically proved or scientifically demonstrated. It seems to begin with our awareness of infinity, even though we are finite. We can conceptualize something perfectly powerful and perfectly good, but we ourselves are weak and sometimes evil. Again, this could simply be because of some aspect of the way our neural networks work. But it leaves us with a sensation of having fallen short, of having been cut off, or cast out, set adrift, separated from perfection. Being limited, we long for the limitlessness we can imagine. There is a sense among much of humanity that we just missed, we put our foot wrong somewhere, and we are now out of kilter, not running true.
I paused to look up a definition of theoria that I could provide here, and ran across Karen Armstrong’s discussion of this very thing. Origen, a Platonist, and an early Christian, said that knowledge of the divine is natural to humanity. He thought it could be awakened and recollected by discipline. He figured we all had once been in perfect contemplation of God – through the Logos – but tired of it and fell away. Our fall was arrested by human bodies. We can make the ascent again (he thought Jesus had never fallen and had come to show us how to make that ascent). The point for now is that we remember God. Plotinus, a Roman who wanted to go to India to study but never made it, rejected Christianity but he said this (Karen Armstrong’s paraphrase), “Human beings are aware that there is something wrong with their condition. They feel at odds with themselves and others, and out of touch with their inner nature, and disoriented. But we constantly try to unite the multiplicity of phenomena and reduce them to an ordered whole. This drive for unity is fundamental to how our minds work and must reflect the true essence of things.” [Compare this with what Gotama Buddha taught.] To find the true reality, we must undergo catharsis (purification) and theoria (contemplation). Reality is One. Being One, it must be simplicity itself. Like Hindus and Buddhists, Plotinus felt that it is really more like Nothing; “We cannot even say it exists, since as Being itself, it is not a thing but is distinct from all things.” The relevant point at the moment is that the One has not remained utterly impenetrable, because we are able to arrive at some understanding of it. “The One must have transcended itself, gone beyond the Simplicity in order to make itself apprehensible to imperfect beings like ourselves. This divine transcendence could be called ecstasy, going out of itself in pure generosity.” How we come to know this One is to remember our original simplicity and return to our true self, which we do by going in – it is a journey through the self, back to the original divinity. This is essentially Buddhist thinking, phrased in Greek terms.
The word theoria was used by Plato and Aristotle. Wisdom (Sophia) was for them the highest of all human virtues, and is reached by theoria, contemplation. But contemplation is not logic alone, even for them. It includes disciplined intuition that results in ecstatic self-transcendence. Philo of Alexandria, a Jew and a Platonist, was one of the early proponents of the Logos, which he saw as the plan of creation but also part of God. “When we contemplate the Logos we form no positive knowledge of God; we are taken beyond the reach of discursive reason to an intuitive apprehension which is ‘higher than a way of thinking, more precious than anything which is merely thought.’” Basil, too, will use the word theoria to express the process through which one comes to understand the Trinity. It isn’t logical; its Truth cannot be apprehended through logic.
Okay, back to my own train of thought. We, humanity, have a sense of ourselves as broken, incomplete, and we conceptualize a state, or a being, who is unlimited, whole, perfect. We long for it and much of our lives are devoted to pursuing it. But, as I hope I’ve demonstrated, logic will not take us there. It is the wrong vehicle.
All of this is to answer the question I posed, “If there is no logical reason to believe in God, then why do so?” The answer is – because there is something in us that drives us toward completion, toward wholeness. And because we have more than logic as a tool for understanding and knowing. We have intuition, we have experience. And our intuition tells us that there is something more. When we follow it, we have experiences that go beyond our ability to logically or rationally conceptualize, beyond the ability of language to describe, or adequately convey. Our hearts, for lack of a better word, know these experiences to be True, to be utter Reality. These moments of direct knowledge show us that the world around us, so easily explained by words and reason, is but a dim approximation of what is Really Real.
All religions are disciplines to help us refine the ability to see with that Other eye. The reason to follow them, then, is not because they make rational sense or because one offers the best logical explanations[2]. The reason is because when we discipline ourselves in the arts of theoria and gnosis, we become more truly ourselves. We know it to be so. Our hearts, or souls, and even our bodies, respond to that truth. They respond with sensations and emotions of joy, peace, unity, satisfaction, wholeness, health, bliss. And our lives begin to feel less out of joint, less disconnected. Our relations with others run more smoothly, our sense of ourselves is more true, more satisfying. And, as with any other discipline, the more we practice, the more fully we orient ourselves toward “God”, the better we get at it, and the richer our blessings become. The kind of amazing thing is that this is true no matter how you conceptualize Absolute Reality, no matter, even, what kind of god God is.
In fact, those people of all different faiths and branches of religions who are most disciplined, who have turned themselves most fully over to this kind of seeing/experiencing/being, all end up sounding pretty much alike. And they all end up making those who want to argue about whether God is a trinity or not, or whether god is male, female, or other, or whether God cares if you eat meat on Friday, or sing his praises accompanied by piano, or whether you make an image of him to help you focus, or even if he approves of gay marriage or whether priests are celibate or all of the stuff religion gets bogged down in, look REALLY ridiculous. Completely missing the point, I think.
I end up here with a different view. If God is as we experience Him through intuitive contemplation, if we trust that direct knowledge, that revelation, then it turns out that it really doesn’t matter why God created the world, or even if he had a purpose at all. Our experiences here on earth are going to be the same, regardless. God might be intensely interested in us personally, loving us like his own children, or It may be royally, supremely, indifferent. Although indifference is not the right word. If we practice the discipline, our lives will run smoothly and we will experience self-transcending joy. It doesn’t matter if the sun cares individually about plants; when a plant is exposed to the sun it is nourished, and grows, and blossoms, and its flowers follow the sun with a kind of adoration and worship.
When I think of the words and lives of the people I most admire, that I think are closest to truth and wisdom (not those who think they are wise because they know a bunch of Bible verses), the image I get of God is more like the sun than it is like a human. I can kind of visualize something like a diamond sun, radiating away beyond all space and time. Just radiating out joy, bliss, creativity, being and – well, love seems almost too human an emotion. Benevolence? Goodness, surely. The opposites of pain, frustration, suffering. I’m not saying God is a diamond or a sun; But sort of like that. And we are all bathed in that Light all of the time. We cannot exist apart from it, our being is wholly rooted in it, and we experience joy, etc., when we turn our faces toward it. Seeing it like that, one is reminded of the incomprehensible vastness, power, and beauty that must be God.
How funny – A family of Jehovah’s Witnesses just rang the bell. I didn’t tell them what I was doing but maybe I should have. I’ll use that as an example later, but the title of their “Awake” was “How to Find True Happiness.”
But the thing is - How can any human conception of God be complete? How can anyone say they know the mind of a God that big? When we are faced with the vastness of the universe or the vastness of our own cells – how tiny a quark is! – and then think of the being that spawned that, and presumably knows it and understands it, I just cannot square that with a God who cares whether or not women wear pants. To imagine that I can even guess at the purposes of such a being is immense hubris. Even the Jewish notion of a God who craves human interaction seems wrong. How can one so great need little old me? But wait . . . because going back to our intuition, it tells us that in fact there is some kind of personal interest. Maybe that isn’t quite right, maybe that is how we interpret the intense pulses of joy and being and goodness that we tune into. But it is also possible that an infinite God might actually love each one of us, individually. Who knows? Again, it doesn’t seem to really matter. What matters is that we align ourselves with Him/It.
My intuition and my logic tell me that the Hindus are probably right. God is personal and impersonal. God is part of us and distinct from us. God is one, and God is many. Our distinctions, our dualities, do not apply. All of those ideas are human ideas, and fall short of what God must be. The monotheists, also, have their points, but I find a lot of their exclusivity, their attribution of human qualities to God, and their focus on rules, to be troubling.
The god of the East, and of Plato, is so immense that there is no Other. I believe this more than I believe in Satan, or some kind of competition. Monotheism at its best also conceptualizes God as this big. But the early Hebrew understanding of God as partial to their little group, partisan, in competition with and jealous of other gods, rings false. That doesn’t mean their God was wrong, of course, but I have to believe their understanding of God was partial and imperfect.
The bigger question is, would God as I understand Him, ever interfere personally in human life? Send messengers? His Son? I really don’t know. There are at least two ways to look at it. One puts the onus on God. God seeks out an individual to get a message across to the rest of humanity. Why? Because he does take a personal interest and wants people to behave in certain ways. Why? Either because he’s a tyrant with a bee in his bonnet, or because he wants to help humans find their way back to him – wants them to receive the blessings that are available by focusing on him. But another possibility is that God didn’t make any move at all; some humans, attuning themselves to God, obtained that direct knowledge and passed it on to others. True messages from God, but it works more like radio. Anyone could have received it at any time. God just is, his message is always the same, and occasionally someone hears it. And because it is so rare that someone listens, when they do they or others interpret it as God speaking individually to them[3]. Both seem equally possible to me.
But a lot of what people attribute to God, I think is completely of their own making. They WANT to believe God wants something (like that women wear veils, or Jews be massacred, or they get a certain job, the Bears win, etc.). Or at best, they’ve garbled and confused the message. I think that the Truth is likely very simple. But due to our fallen, multiplicious state, we make it complex and confusing. So something like “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” might truly have meant “I am the source of all things. Keep your focus on me and you won’t go wrong.” But people take it and the meaning becomes things like: smash the tools others make to help them focus on me, argue with one another about how many gods there are and whose is the most powerful, be merciless to those who interpret me differently, etc.
It is possible, though, that God occasionally gets tired/impatient/saddened by the way we keep messing up the message, and does in fact communicate directly with us, as through the Jewish prophets and Mohammed, through Zoroaster, and maybe others. And then what about Krishna and Jesus, who are thought to be God himself, come to earth? But that is going to have to wait for another day. I’ve been writing for four hours straight and my body is screaming. I need to get to the grading.
April 24
As I continue to re-read the gospels, even more questions arise. There are a lot of things in them that I can’t make any sense of. Some I’ve asked my parents about before, like why does Jesus allow the demons “legion” to destroy a bunch of innocent pigs? Why does he say that he speaks in parables in order that most will not understand, and will therefore not return and be forgiven? My folks’ answer was that these are mysteries. But at what point do the “mysteries” add up to more than what makes sense? When does the message become so “mysterious” that meaning is lost? I’m willing to believe that Jesus was so spiritually advanced that we less perfect beings cannot adequately judge, or understand him, get what he really meant. But doesn’t that mean we should approach everything he is supposed to have said with great caution?
I feel very ambiguously toward Jesus. I have a notion of what he was like from Sunday School and Church, but reading the gospels, he’s actually a much more complicated person than most Christians allow for. Really his actions and words are rarely straightforward. And he does certainly seem to be hung up on the idea that the world was about to end; something he was clearly wrong about.
Obviously, I’m going to attempt to write about this in a more systematic way, but I wanted to begin working some of it out “on the side.”
Part of the problem is that I can’t really be sure what Jesus said, and what was added later, or misunderstood. I do not believe that the Bible is divinely protected from error. But it is dangerous water to begin picking and choosing what you are going to believe out of it. I feel I want to have a very good reason for rejecting things, and not just take the easy way out by saying anything that doesn’t fit my personal notion of what Jesus must have been like must be in error. I want to carefully, faithfully, deal with what is there. It may take a long time. I don’t expect to be able to come to a definitive statement anytime soon. This is, must be, a life long search for understanding. But it feels important to me to take stock of where I am right now, so that I can proceed.
[1] A “missing link” scenario is one in which people say, “Okay, I see that A exists, and I see that C exists. I do not see evidence of B, and therefore this must be a place in which a divine being intervened to bridge the gap.”
[2] This is where I think the neo-conservative Evangelicals in the U.S. have gone wrong. Well, one of the places. They have allowed the language of science to win. When they argue that the Creation can be explained through reason and scientific evidence, they have already lost the battle, by conceding that reason and science are the only valid ways of knowing anything.
[3] At some point I’ll explain or provide links about the quantum physics of how in fact we may literally create reality for ourselves. Thus, people might in fact see real angels, avatars, etc., because they may really exist for them, for that time, that culture, etc. May also explain many miracles.
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